Almaty Management University develops research to create sustainable impact in Central Asia

Development of the research and science is one of the top priorities for the University. Historically AlmaU has mostly been a teaching institution, nevertheless all faculty members, students and staff students have an opportunity to participate in different activities to conduct research in collaboration with local and foreign partners as well as to join to dialogue and discussions on achievements, innovations, projects development, intellectual work and interdisciplinary studies. Topics completely match the AlmaU strategic objectives and look at sustainable social, environmental and economic problems.

Among main research activities are joint projects, consulting services, publicity, organization of forums, workshops, round tables, winter and summer schools. Faculty and staff are grouped into research teams according to the spheres of interests. AlmaU attracts prominent researchers and practitioners to arrange R&D works. The University focuses on following spheres: entrepreneurship, management, business, education, knowledge management, social responsibility and regional development. AlmaU contributes to a synergy of research in cooperation with business, government and society aiming to provide 1) integration of research results into the educational

process; 2) conduct of best practice into curriculums and studies; 3) commercialization of projects and research results. AlmaU attracts state grant and external financing from international organizations, NGOs and companies to increase the outcomes and scale of science and research.

Development of a culture of research activity implements through infrastructure, motivation system, databases, operation of labs and scientific and research centers at AlmaU. AlmaU operates the following facilities: Center for Social Entrepreneurship, Center of Political Research, Media Lab, Neuromarketing Laboratory, Kaizen Center, BilimLab (KnowledgeLab), “1C” Laboratory, Cyber polygon, «IT Start-up» Lab, Robotics Lab, Center of Mediation and Excellence and etc.). In 2018 Astana International Financial Center established Laboratory for Fintech start-ups. This project successfully runs providing design and development of innovation technologies in financial sphere and preparing specialists in fintech.  AlmaU jointly with AIFC and Hong Kong University is implementing an international project on finance aiming to introduce open online courses in Fintech from prominent internationally recognized economists and scientists to wide Russian speaking audience.

Faculty and staff members are involved into research groups and provide consulting services for stakeholders: government, local authorities, companies, research centers, NGOs, partner universities and others.

Project “Creative Spark: Higher education enterprise programme” funded by British Council. The project is

implemented in partnership with Northampton University, Kazakhstan Fashion Week, prominent Kazakhstani designers, business society and other participants, by AlmaU School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Project “Social entrepreneurship in Kazakhstan as a new model of sustainable social change: trends, problems and development prospects in modern Kazakhstan” funded by Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan. This project has regional impact and involves people with disabilities including entrepreneurs, specific associations and organizations, local authorities, by AlmaU Centre of Social Entrepreneurship

Project “Strategic directions for the development of the agglomerations of Astana, Almaty, Shymkent and Aktobe, taking into account territorial planning, economic potential, infrastructure development, demographic forecast, environmental status, development of human capital and other factors” run in partnership with Rakurs Consulting Group (Kazakhstan), by AlmaU Strategic Office and School of Management.

– Project “Providing technical help in the development and implementation of Quality Management System in Tajik State University of Commerce” funded by World Bank, by

AlmaU International Office and Academic Innovation Department.

Project “Strategy of attracting foreign investment for Almaty till 2022”, at the request of the Almaty City Council, designed by AlmaU Strategic Office and School of Management.

Project “Competitiveness and stress resistance of the civil aviation of the Republic of Kazakhstan” funded by Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan, by AlmaU School of Management.

Project “University Partnerships for Global Social Impact Projects” run in collaboration with Lehigh University, UNICEN, American Councils, by AlmaU R&D Department, School of Management and School of Engineering Management.

Project “Accelerating ICT students’ startup development competence via interdisciplinary modular courses in the HEI curricula” funded by Erasmus+ and in cooperation with partner universities from Germany, Estonia, Russia and Kazakhstan, by AlmaU School of Engineering Management and School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Project “Supporting the Economic Empowerment of Afghan Women through Education and Training in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan” funded by the European Union and implemented by the UNDP Kazakhstan, by AlmaU Language Centre.

Project “Ecosystem of Students’ Entrepreneurship” regionally developed in collaboration with Eurasian Resources Group, Tel-Aviv University and 8 universities and 1 college of Kazakhstan, by AlmaU School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Project “University Management 2020” is a unique intensive program designed as per the special order of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The project is incorporated with the State development program of education and science for 2020-2025. It has been designed and run by AlmaU Institute of Education Development. The most prominent experts from around the world are invited to contribute to the project on the topics of: HRM, research, digitalization and internationalization of education, and impact of education on society. It points out the importance of being responsible educators and explains the benefits of the third mission of the universities. One of the modules is run in cooperation with Russian top universities, such as SKOLKOVO, SkolTech, MISIS and Higher School of Economics. The purpose of the training is to increase the efficiency of higher education institutions via building the capacity of the rector and vice-rector cohorts of the Republic of Kazakhstan: the 25 CEOs of national, state and private universities of Kazakhstan eager to increase their personal competitiveness and achieve success in management activities.

Project on measuring the level of society trust and readiness for change, the social and sociological research in collaboration with the Center for Social Cooperation and Communications. As a result, there was survey feedback collected and analyzed based on 35 thousand respondents from 274 companies.

Yearly, AlmaU holds scientific-practical conferences where students and faculty present their research and scientific results. As a socially responsible university, AlmaU also pays a lot of attention to the development of the social awareness among students. AlmaU encourages students to take part in social research projects.

In June 2019 AlmaU held “Green Economy in City Environment: from theory to execution” Forum. The forum brought together founders of eco-startups, business incubators and indifferent citizens deciding problems of ecology. The urgent topics were following: using eco-initiatives for internal and external communications, introduction of eco-standards in business and education, amendments to the current environmental laws and regulations, urban improvement and development of urban ecosystem. AlmaU openly supports ongoing initiatives such as eco-university, green building, smart city, environmentally friendly transport and waste management.

Every semester R&D jointly with the schools runs the Master and Doctoral level colloquium to update on the ongoing postgraduate research. Graduate students participate in the AlmaU Graduate Colloquium submitting extended abstracts of their thesis or result of their research works. Three editions were published within last two years. Every Colloquium resulted with discussions between young scientists and researchers who presented their works in different spheres of interests.

The University publishes The EurAsian Journal of Leadership. The e-journal is double-blind peer reviewed. The Journal is an open access journal (no reader fee – no author fee). The publication languages are English and Russian. In the realm of leadership and management, the core academic areas of the Journal are: strategic management, finance, economics, engineering management, human resources, entrepreneurship and leadership, political science, law, international relations, sociology, education and others.

In 2019-2020 academic year AlmaU is running the three-month-long courses “Publishing a research article in Scopus journals” at AlmaU. During the course, participants developed a research article according to the format of Scopus journals: from the idea generation to the article ready for publication. For faculty, doctoral students and university staff participation was free. For their convenience, the course organizers are working on creation of a workbook on the topic of every meeting. The mentors of the course are researchers and university staff who have research and practical experience in foreign universities and large international organizations and invited speakers (local and foreign researchers, representatives of Elsevier (Scopus), Web of Science). More than 70 AlmaU teachers, staff and doctoral students registered for the course, having at least 15 articles in co-authorship to be published. The course is also attended by young students, future researchers who are already in their 1-2-3 years of studies and interested in how to conduct scientific research and write articles. Over 15 working papers have been designing, five of them are under reviewing at impact scientific journals.

The first Scopus awards ceremony for the best scientists of the country took place in November, 2018. AlmaU associate prof. PhD D. Sapargalyev became the nominee of the award «Contribution to Science».

In December 2019 on the ceremony of «Scopus Award 2019» AlmaU received the award «Growth of the year» for presenting the growing number of publications of the Scopus database in 2019 compared to the previous year among organizations in the Republic of Kazakhstan.